


of rain

by transarmin



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Inspired by Lost Girls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 16:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21182489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transarmin/pseuds/transarmin
Summary: A short study of Mikasa Ackerman, of trauma and how it changes our perception of the simplest things.





	of rain

**Author's Note:**

> i was inspired to write this by the lost girls novel, thanks for reading!

Rain is warmth. The comforting warmth that comes from quiet, peaceful days beside the slowly burning logs of the fire. The smell of freshly baked raisin bread with honey, and hot vegetable soup that warms your chest, and the rumbles of anticipation from inside your hungry stomach. Mother humming songs as she sews and Father whistling along as he mends his tools. Rain is gentle kisses to your forehead, gentle fingers running through your hair like they’re weaving silk. A little pale hand atop a big one. Rain is helping with chores and playing with dolls and learning how to spell your own name. Watching droplets roll down the window and drawing faces on the glass. The constant pitter patter on the roof, and the crackle of the fire, and the hum as water boils to make tea. Days that go by slowly and end too soon. Rain is a little cabin in the mountains and nothing else exists at all, not the villages nor the forests nor the streams that run through them. If you step outside, you’ll get wet. Rain is the comfort of four walls and a roof over your head, the presence of Mother and Father beside you, the feeling of _ home _ that seems it will last forever. 

::

Rain is cold. The type of cold that suffocates, and makes your bones ache, and your eyes sting. You feel like a baby bird that cannot find her way back to the nest, to the warmth and safety of her mother's wings. A little bird caught in a trap and poked and prodded at with sticks, by grotesque creatures who look at you with ravenous but hollow eyes. It’s the type of cold that is dark, and inescapable, and all-encompassing. Nothing you can do will shift this cold. Rain is _ knock knock _ at the door and _ thump _ on the ground, a scream that pierces through your chest like a knife and echoes on and on. Rain is confusion, your mind is murky and gray like the early spring fog, your head is numb and thudding. Your hands tremble - you’re not afraid, just cold, frozen. Your ears are ringing as if to say _ it’s too loud, make it stop_. Every noise hurts, pricks you like a needle in your eardrums, every little shuffle or grunt or cough or whisper or mumble or footstep. Rain and blood become one and you can’t tell the difference anymore. Your heart feels like it has turned to stone, heavy, pinning you down to the floorboards, more so even than the restraints at your wrists. Rain is a terrible, cruel thing. 

::

Rain is a battlefield. Nausea brews in your stomach. Your hands aren’t shaking but your knuckles are white, clenched tight, and they ache. Something inside you says _ give up, let me die, this isn’t real, let me die, let this end, let it be over_. Your body won’t move. It isn’t your body anymore. Rain is little more than a mist that fills the air, lacking personality, quiet and cold and hardly there at all. The sky is gray and overcast and you no longer remember what the sun looks like, nor the welcoming hues of a sunrise, nor the silvery light of the moon against the blackness of midnight. Everything is gray. Even the blood - once a hungry and threatening red - has faded into gray. Rain is shattered windows and falling roof tiles and walls that are smeared with death. But even the coldest, dullest, rainiest, bloodiest day can be beautiful. A butterfly flutters, lands on the ground. Wings so white they are almost see-through, a delicate and peaceful thing. This is no place for a thing like that, but here it is, alive in a world that wants to kill everything. A world that has no mercy, but contains beautiful things. The butterfly reminds you of something, someone. You blink and the butterfly is gone, like him, there for an instant and then just gone. There’s still strength in your body somewhere, an aching and far away strength but it lingers nonetheless, a reminder of his presence inside of you. _ Fight_.


End file.
